The Known Cults & Mysteries of Northwest Indiana
Project began 2018, site established 2019.
We work to protect the people of Northwest Indiana from the dangers of cult activity. See our mission statement for more.
Above is a list of the most iconic cults & mysteries in Northwest Indiana.
About Us
We are a group of people who work to fight against cults & the dangers they bring. We also investigate some of the more dangerous mysteries to keep students out of danger.
The project began as a dumb joke, with a bunch of friends driving around all summer looking for things to do. It later evolved into this: our catalogue of everything we've discovered.
Fairhaven Baptist Church
In 1970, Roger Voegtlin founded the Fairhaven Baptist Church Little did he or the townspeople know that Fairhaven Baptist Church would become one of the most notorious cults in and around Chesterton and Porter, Indiana.
Project Mercury was approved on October 7, 1958, which led to the first orbital flight by an American astronaut, John Glenn, in the "Friendship 7" spacecraft, about three years and four months later, on February 20, 1962.
On April 7, 1959, the seven original Mercury astronauts were selected, having been culled from a total of 69 prospective candidates. The seven original Mercury astronauts were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Walter Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Donald "Deke" Slayton.
1961
On January 31, 1961, a Redstone rocket launched a Mercury space vehicle from Cape Canaveral with Ham, a 37-pound chimpanzee, as its passenger in a suborbital flight. Ham survived the flight in good shape, but when he was shown the space vehicle again later, made clear he wanted no part of it. 
On February 1, John Glenn, Virgil Grissom, and Alan Shepard were selected to train for the first manned space flight.
On April 12, 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, became the first human to be launched into orbit around the earth aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft. The flight lasted 108 minutes, at an orbital speed of 27,400 kilometers per hour. Unlike the Mercury spacecraft, the Vostok 1's reentry was entirely controlled by onboard computers, with Gagarin more of a passenger than a pilot. Gagarin also did not land in the Vostok 1, but ejected and landed using a parachute. Gagarin died in a plane crash in 1968 and never flew in space again.
On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard made the first manned suborbital flight in the Freedom 7 spacecraft. A Redstone booster rocket launched Shepard into suborbit, with Shepard exercising manual control of the vehicle after separation from the booster. The spacecraft reached an altitude of 116.5 miles and had a flight trajectory of 302 miles from Cape Canaveral. The flight lasted a little over 15 minutes. During the flight, Shepard experienced 5 minutes of weightlessness. The spacecraft reached a top speed of 5,180 miles; Shepard experienced 6 Gs on launch and 12 Gs on reentry.
Many questions about the safety of manned exploration into space could not be fully answered prior to sending humans into space. These included questions about the effects on human physiology of high G forces during launch and reentry, extended periods of weightlessness during orbit, life-support systems (to provide air, water, and food), possible decompression from impact with a meteroid, and exposure to space radiation (including cosmic rays impacting the earth's atmosphere at close to the speed of light).
On May 25, 1961 in an address to Congress, President John F. Kennedy called for an accelerated program to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade of the 1960s: "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth."(3)
On July 21, 1961, Virgil Grissom became the second American to make a suborbital flight aboard the Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft. The speed, height, and length of the flight was close to that experienced by Shepard. After landing, however, the spacecraft sank and was lost in the Atlantic due to the premature activation of a hatch release.
On August 6, 1961, the Soviets launched the second man to orbit the earth, Gherman S. Titov, aboard the Vostok 1I spacecraft.
On September 13, 1961, an unmanned Mercury spacecraft was successfully launched into orbit with a mechanically simulated pilot onboard. The Atlas booster, which had a series of earlier launch failures, performed well.
On November 29, 1961, a 37.5 pound chimpanzee, Enos, was launched into orbit. The mission, scheduled for three orbits, was cut short after two orbits due to minor problems with the roll reaction jet and electrical system.
1962
After several postponements, on February 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to be launched into orbit by an Atlas rocket booster aboard the Friendship 7 spacecraft, with some 60 million persons watching live on television. Glenn's three-orbit flight lasted 4 hours and 55 minutes. Glenn's flight was not without problems. The automatic control system required Glenn to take over control of the spacecraft using manual-electrical fly-by-wire controls, and a faulty switch falsely indicated that a holding clamp for the heat shield had been prematurely released (during reentry, the retropack was not jettisoned as had been planned in order to insure that the heat shield remained in place). Glenn experienced no harmful effects or discomfort from the 4.5 hours of weightlessness he experienced during the flight.
On May 24, 1962, Scott Carpenter became the second American to orbit the earth aboard the Aurora 7 spacecraft. Carpenter replaced Donald Slayton, who was originally scheduled to be the second astronaut in orbit (Slayton was grounded due to a slight heartbeat irregularity). As with Glenn, Carpenter's flight lasted three orbits. On reentry, the spacecraft overshot the predicted landing spot by 250 miles, due to an error when firing the retrograde rockets. Carpenter was safely recovered by helicopter after waiting in the water for almost three hours.
On August 11, 1962, Andrian Nikolayev was launched into orbit aboard the Vostok 1II, and on August 12, Pavel Popovich joined him in orbit aboard the Vostok 1V. In orbit, the two spacecrafts achieved a near-rendevouz.
On October 3, 1962, Walter Schirra was launched aboard the Sigma 7 spacecraft on a six-orbit flight. Schirra's flight transpired without any problems. After a flight of over nine hours, Schirra's spacecraft landed only 9,000 yards away from the primary recovery ship.
On November 4, 1962, Enos, the first chimpanzee to orbit the earth, died from causes unrelated to his orbital flight.
1963
On May 15, 1963, Gordon Cooper was launched aboard the Faith 7 spacecraft on a 22-orbit flight. During the flight, Cooper became the first person to launch a satellite, a flashing beacon, from orbit. An attempt to deploy a balloon failed. Cooper also spent three of his 22 orbits sleeping. Due to a faulty indicator of an automatic control system problem, reentry was done manually, with Cooper manually firing the sequence of retrograde rockets and maintaining the proper reentry attitude by referencing the horizon through his observation window. Despite the manual reentry, Cooper landed only 7,000 yards from the prime recovery ship, after a 34-hour flight.
On June 12, 1963, James E. Webb, NASA Administrator, announced that there would be no more Project Mercury flights, scrubbing one final flight that had been planned. Of the orginal seven astronauts, four had been in orbit (Glenn, Carpenter, Schirra, and Cooper, while two had suborbital flights (Shepard and Grissom). Only Slayton, originally scheduled to fly instead of Carpenter, had not been in space, although he was later to go into space on the Apollo-Soyuz docking mission in 1975.
Gemini and Apollo
The Gemini and Apollo programs followed the Mercury Project. Gemini used a two-man spacecraft that was launched using the Titan rocket. There were 11 manned Gemini missions between March of 1965 and November of 1966. On the second Gemini mission, Edward White II became the first American to perform a spacewalk outside of his spacecraft. Apollo used a three-man spacecraft that was launched using the Saturn rocket. There were 4 manned Apollo missions before Apollo 11 was launched on July 16, 1969, on its way to landing the first men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, on the moon (Michael Collins remained in orbit in the command module). The Apollo mission answered the call made by President Kennedy to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade.
Notes:
- "An Overview of NASA," NASA Fact Sheet 2000-01-001-HQ, available at http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/facts/HTML/FS-001-HQ.html. [Return]
- Eugene M. Emme, Aeronautics and Astronautics: An American Chronology of Science and Technology in the Exploration of Space: 1915 - 1960 (Washington: NASA HHR-3, 1961), p. 60. [Return]
- "Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs," speech delivered by President John F. Kennedy before a joint session of Congress, May 25, 1961, available from the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library at http://www.cs.umb.edu/jfklibrary/j052561.htm. [Return]
Shirley Johnson
E-mail: shirleyj@inorbit.emcp.com
All images utilized in this report are from NASA's JSC Digital Image Collection at http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/. For guidelines for use of NASA imagery, see http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/luceneweb/guidelines.jsp